Sunday, April 29, 2018

The Hughing and the Crying

File under: "Plus ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Colbert"

For future generations trying to figure out what the White House Co-Conspirators Correspondents Dinner was an why it took so long for it to crawl under a porch and die (and then, years later, rebooted with new cast members and a darker, edgier tone.

Here are a few of 2018's predictably indignant Hot Takes from the great minds of the American punditocracy:

I've heard about two dozen comics at White House Correspondents' Association dinners over the years, but Michelle Wolfe this year was the second worst. Rich Little, your title is still intact! pic.twitter.com/wyOJnET4Ra

Apology is owed to @PressSec and others grossly insulted ny Michelle Wolf at White House Correspondents Assoc dinner which started with uplifting heartfelt speech by @margarettalev - comedian was worst since Imus insulted Clinton’s

I think @PressSec unflinching gaze at Michelle Wolf was the most interesting thing about the event, which is intended to honor the First Amendment but in fact mocked the values of civil society so thoroughly as to stun even the cynical reporters. The honest ones will admit it.

And here is a snip from Ana Marie Cox's sighing, scolding Hot Take from 12 years earlier, during the depths of yet another Republican dumpster fire presidency.

Was Stephen Colbert Funny?

...

This insistence on the hilarity of Colbert's routine has a bullying quality, implying that jokes which adhere to the correct ideology are hilarious and failure to find humor in the party line is a kind of thought crime. By this logic, Cindy Sheehan should be hosting the Academy Awards.

In the past day or so, perhaps realizing they had lost the battle to argue Colbert's stand-up into something that will be universally acknowledged as funny, the liberal commentariat has shifted tactics. Salon's Joan Walsh, for instance, pretended to grant that humor was subjective: "Let's even give Colbert's critics that point. Clearly he didn't entertain most of the folks at the dinner Saturday night." But whose fault is that? Why, those who were not entertained, of course. The tepid response "tells us more about the audience than it does about Colbert." Not laughing, it turns out, was part of the press corps' master plan, because "Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part. He had to be marginalized. Voil': 'He wasn't funny.'" Never has "marginalized" sounded so sinister. He's lucky we didn't kill him.

Others took a bolder approach: Colbert may not have been funny, but that doesn't matter. He spoke "truthiness" to power, "you so don't get it when you spin the idea that Colbert's performance had anything to do with laughs," HuffPo commentators proclaim: "This time, Colbert didn't have to be funny. Because he was right." Added one, "What he did was not comedy. It was a public service." This, I believe, will come as news to both the people who paid him to perform and to Stephen Colbert...

If you were so inclined, you could put all the 2006 Hot Takes and all the 2018 Hot Takes into your stereopticon side-by-side and hold them up to the light and they would form a lovely three dimensional diorama of just about everything that is fucked up at the intersection of American politics and American corporate media.

Or you could just ignore it. Because to real people out here in the real world, all the Hughing (pun intended) and crying and rending of waistcoats and crushing of pearls into dust around this zombie exercise in media self-congratulation amounts to little more than Big Glove Boxing in the Beltway bouncy house. The Tone Police and Trump Collaborators in the mainstream media get to work up a little sweat, crank out 800 contractually obligated words on the Coarsening and the Cheapening and the yadda yadda yadda --

You neglected to include one of my top 5 vacuous wastes of political commentary space, Chris Cillizza who found Wolf's jokes a reason to get the vapors. It's probably because he doesn't traffic in news and politics for a living because if he did he surely would understand that the vile utter horseshit lies and comments that come out of Trump's gobshite piehole regarding nazis, goldstar families, veterans, veteran senators, 3rd world countries and women are really secondary to his unconscionably awful policy and leadership. So I guess it's good that Cillizza doesn't have an important platform to spread his opinions that have the heft of a dog fart.

The right wings despise of the "Political Correctness" has now been adopted by the right. Embraced and demanded of their critics.

OK with the GOP and only enabled by the press. No remorse cited. For example (and the toilet runneth over with examples).

(Birth certificate accusations. Never an apology as Trump never walked it back. * Republican Rep. Joe wilson shouting out and interrupting then president Obama in the midst of his formal address to the Nation and Congress with, "You Lie"! Sure, there was a foot note in the paper that Wilson wrote an apology to Obama. But, Wilson offended many across the nation and never a scent of remorse as he used it to raise campaign dollars to rile up more hate and anger he sold.As long as the Kansas nut bag right wing baptist (achem) church varmints protested moderate and democratic minded families at their Veteran family funerals. It was good stuff. Hating on the Gay. Once they did this to enough republican families. GOP and Dem in states answered with restrictions on laws of distance between the funerals and the Baptist right wing hate protesters. But only once their own began to be protested and offended in such a grievance time.

Understand, The press in deep involvement in this has been more than enabling to the right. More stories of "free speech you -MIGHT_ disagree with but must protect. While the mantra for flag burning protests from the far right was enabled. Until someone other than "their side" flew the flag upside down. Oh, the disrespect for America! Like kneeling at a football game?

Take the great big divide in the country. One side disgustingly disrested everthing and everyone by refusing to even sit down with a SCOTUS nominee. Of 27 years distinguished judge service. Shit all over their responsibility of "Advise and Consent". held back that seat for 14 months. For a president who not just trashed a judge (Curiel) racially. As that judge oversaw his University Fraud case. They held that SCOTUS seat for that same pathetic man to nominate that replacement.Now, the question for the fire ants at the dumpster is,"why can't the left get along"? Why can't the hateful left not compromise to get 'er done for Murica"? As the press picks this up and airs out their questions of , why do the Democrats obstruct and make America fail?

Not that McConnell and pals declared making Obama fail, even if they have to make America fail. Sure the press notated it. Nevr did they toss a GOPer on the Barbi day after day.

This defending the right of the FOX or the Infowars to propagandize (for profit) enboldening, enraging and maing righteous of the Good NAZIs is nt protected speech.

When they propabandize folks into hunting abortion doctors and shooting them dead in their church whiole they pray. As the convince via lies that HRC is running a child sex ring out of a pizza joint basement. One of their republican brotherhood goes there and fires shots demand entrance into a basement they do not have.They had nothing to do with it! As they re enact Pilate's washing the blood off his hands. They are just entertaining and some foll took them seriously.VsYelling bomb on an airplane. I just told the guy there was a bomb and someone needs to do something fast. he is the one who took me seriously and acted on it.

So, if you are a handicapped Journalist who was mocked publicly by Trump, If you are LGBT and in the military (or not), If you are a judge of Mexican decent or have anti NAZI and KKK feelings. You must now embrace them and give them the respect they do not, have not and shall not bestow to you. They will decide who is and who is not a worthy human being and just try to get along and be more comprising.

Remember how the right spoke out so loud and proud of the Neville Chamberlain's compromising with Hitler? The statues the built in his honor?

As an Englishman, your comment struck home deeply. Unfortunately, the left in the U.K. is repeating Chamberlain's error in not wanting the Tories held accountable for their crimes out of fear that stopping brexshit today wouldn't be right as the rwnjs would be outraged.